Trying to outdo himself in PR grandstanding and in silliness, the wacky Midwest chapter leader of SNAP, Peter Isely, recently wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee asking that it criminally investigate the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for merely transferring funds to a cemetery trust years ago.

In 2007, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee, created a $57 million trust fund for the archdiocese in order to provide sufficient funds for the ongoing and future care and maintenance of Catholic cemeteries, which is exactly what the transferred money had always been intended for. Dolan also had to create the trust fund because it was "required by state law and mandated by the archdiocesan finance council."

Yet Isely apparently believes that any and all available diocesan monies, including those specifically to be held in trust for other purposes, should be going solely to abuse claimants and their contingency lawyers, however questionable or long ago the claims. Thus Isely claims in his letter to the U.S. Attorney that the $57 million transfer by Dolan to the cemetery trust is evidence of "fraud" worthy of a full fledged federal criminal investigation.

SNAP's growing list of PR stunts

Meanwhile, rather than providing any real support for actual abuse victims, which is its purported mission, SNAP continues its strategy of filing bogus legal claims as a way of garnering publicity for itself.

Just last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC, in “The Hague” in the Netherlands) flatly rejected a wacky request by SNAP that the ICC investigate Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church for "crimes against humanity" for their handling of abuse claims many decades ago.

And then in April, a federal judge roundly rebuffed a lawsuit by SNAP by which the group aimed to harass and intimidate peaceful Sunday Mass goers. The judge even dismissed SNAP's lawsuit with prejudice, meaning that SNAP is forever barred from ever filing such a silly suit again.

In his most recent PR stunt, Isely was likely hoping a lot of that $57 million that Dolan transferred in 2007 would end up going into the pockets of his friend, contingency lawyer Jeff Anderson, who, in turn, would further line the coffers at SNAP to pay for its salaries and expenses.

Once again, we see that SNAP will pull just about any publicity stunt imaginable – which the mainstream media will always happily report as news – in order to grease the pockets of their contingency lawyer-friends, with whom we have shown repeatedly SNAP works hand in hand.

Comments

The various SNAP efforts mentioned here serve, I think, to Keep Up The Appearance that The Ball Is Still Rolling. If it weren’t for all these stunts and all these efforts to spin – regardless of fact or law or rationality – the Church as being ‘evil’, then what would they have left?

They must hope that there are still enough people willing to simply go along with the old Script of the past three decades without giving the matter any further thought. There is still enough support among some of the media – the New York Times, certainly – to help prop things up.

When I think of the ridiculous anti-Catholic bigots at SNAP and the long since discredited NYT, an image comes to mind of two ageing bald men stumbling around in the dark trying to lay their hands on the only comb they have between them, in bizarre denial about the comb's mostly missing teeth. Not sure which of them is the more pathetic.

There is a logic that says "if these are the people that are against the Church, then, I must be with the Church".

And, so far, it is only the Church that is willing to stand against this lawless Administration that would suspend or rescind as many freedoms (including religious liberty) as the uninformed (brainwashed) citizenry (we see them post on this site, daily) is willing to sheepishly accept.

Mark, Is the image that you use purely fantasy or inspired by your actual experience? Oh, you forgot to write, "LOL." Good comment though. Yea! The NYT is soooo discredited! Just ask Mark.

Domingo, You are doing some weird capitalization with "Truth" and "Time." Have you been reading too much publicly publion? He uses caps to create his own vocabulary that serves to make his points more tersely. Here you sound like you are foreshadowing an apocalypse. That is not a very original move for the religious. Learn from the past and just don't ever throw a date out there. Good luck and keep it vague, brother.

We now see the publicly-masked Learned-Counsel give up on the substantively-themed comments and seek his actual level. He is wise to do this: Harvard and/or the law firm that allegedly employs him may have a few problems if it becomes clear how he is been tarnishing their brands, and others here may be a bit annoyed if it were – could it be imagined? – to come out that his Harvard and his attorney creds are just more bits of internet … whimsy. On the internet, as that cartoon has it, “nobody knows you’re a dog”.

But following up on a thought from a week or two ago, I see again this strange reality: there appear to be no competent commenters from the pro-Abusenik ranks who are willing to step into the stream and answer questions and discuss matters.

I doubt that any of such persons would want to try to answer the(non-philosophical) questions that have appeared on this site over the course of the past year and more. I doubt they could answer them – that’s a major indicator of just what has been wrong with the Abusenik Stampede.

Although there is a major difference in the quality of presentation, yet the truth-dodgy, pile-tossing efforts to just Keep The Ball Rolling And The Spin Going are the same, whether we see it in the pages of the NYT or in the assorted ketchup-splattered specimens that appear here.

LC"s public "mask" doesn't hide him at all. He was a child victim of sex abuse in your Church. He went to Harvard and is a Boston lawyer. He's married with a child, I think. He's revealed quite a lot about himself.

And then we have D and P.

[edited by moderator]

L.C. most likely has a job with a law firm and needs to not reveal all for his business' sake.

Why do you insult people for being honest and being who they are? L.C. is both a good writer and good thinker. He gives credence to his education and has had the strength to survive horrors [edited by moderator]

So we have some who don't like The Press the NewYork Times gives the good Cardinal and the Catholic Church well in my view it s well deserved and the record speaks for itself.For most part The good Cardinal gets greatreviews in the press I find little fault with what the NewYork Times writes they tell the truth perhaps that is what people don't like .It s my view that the work and the press that the good Cardinal gets especially in NewYork is over rated .You can't tell a Book By It s Cover

The valentines from JR to LC are what they are and what's new? I've often suggested there's a lot going on among and between certain types of mentaltities behind the actual posting interactions.

However JR reveals once again with crystal clarity the impossible gap and abyss at the core of the entire Stampede: How do we know that LC is who he says he is? Answer by JR: Simple – because he says he is! Wheeeeeeee! That was simple. Thus too for the elite university credentials, the claimed legal chops, a-n-d the victim allegations.

And thus having demonstrated that bit of competence, JR has now cleared his path to accuse me of insulting LC for doubting his veracity. Once again: precisely the Playbook scam from Day One: if you don't believe me then you re-victimze me (although, of course, we haven't even yet established that you were victimized in the first place … that sort of thing).

And we can now take JR"s word for it that LC "is a good writer and a good thinker" because – ya' see – JR is all of those things too and is also doing some book-type stuff even as we speak.

If JR actually can demonstrate the proof of his assertion that LC "hides little", then let's see that proof. Otherwise this is just another bit from the cafeteria or the day-room. But it's also an indicator of how the Playbook interacts with certain doggy mentalities that can not only hide their dogginess in the internet modality (or at least they think they can) but can also project themselves as whatever they care to imagine.

And if JR can demonstrate just how he rules-out utterly the possibility that LC hides his name and employment affiliation because it would quickly become clear that he has no Harvard or law-firm affiliation or even Bar admission … let's see him show us the rationale for ignoring that hardly-improbable possibility. (Hint: he won't because he can't and he'll change the subject as fast as he can.)

And if anybody notices that their dots don't connect, then they can simply claims (to themselves in the mirror and to each other through these valentines) that they have simply been re-victimized all over again.

3p, I am multi-planar like your world view. I will comment intelligently sometimes, crassly the next, humorously from time to time, formally and then informally.

In a work context I communicate differently than when I am speaking to a friend. In fact, I talk socially a bit differently with different people. That is actually pretty normal social behavior. Sorry to have to update you on normal social behavior.

It is excellent that you once saw that cartoon.

No one here can prove that I graduated from Harvard and no one can prove that I did not. Does that remind you of another argument that we have been having?

Back on the Elmo comments, I discussed that you brought up the question of how you get a Ford truck without a Henry Ford. The Ford analogy, I said, is like the flight school analogy and I noted that both are like Paley’s Watchmaker Analogy. Basically, these arguments state that design implies a designer.

I went on to talk about how Richard Dawkins argues against a design for the natural world and thus makes a designer unnecessary. The basic idea of The Blind Watchmaker is that we do not need to postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else in the universe. I repeat that things in nature maybe "apparently purposeful" but that is it. They are not purposeful.

Why do cows exist? They exist in order to praise god with their cow-ness. I heard this on the radio said by a professional apologist on 1060AM The Station of the Cross –Boston just the other day. That is why it was on my mind as an example. I do not often give much thought to cows. But cows have no purpose! That they exist is good enough. We can eat them or worship them or do something less drastic than either of those options. Planes, cars, watches, computers are intelligently designed and do have purposes. They are man- made. Animals, plants, people, oceans and planet Earth do not have a purpose. We were not on Earth in the past and we may not be in the future. Certainly, we will not exist in our current form in the very distant future. Evolution will see to that. We are not necessary or purposeful. I bet that to prove that we are necessary or purposeful in some way you will have to postulate a god.

Religion is man-made and thus it had a purpose. The purpose was to explain things in a world of horror and mystery in earlier more primitive times. Natural disasters, for example, though I can do many others if necessary, were god’s judgments. As people have advanced in intelligence and we have learned much much more about the world, we have largely out grown the need for religion. People today who think that natural disasters are god’s judgments are limited to the Westboro Baptist Church, to exaggerate only slightly. Religion has retreated all the way back to the beginning of the universe to find sufficiently unanswered/unanswerable questions and insert god. Maybe god created the universe by instituting the Big Bang. No one can yet prove that god did not do it, though physicist Lawrence Krauss thinks he may be able to, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something rather than Nothing.

I Finally agree with something the haters/bigots say – end ALL tax exemptions, go for the flat tax for everyone and make the lazy welfarers/entitlement OWSers work for their own booty (…which will just serve to fuel the drug and prostitution market).

The Church wil do just fine, though, don't worry. Our Faith is nourished by the blood of our martyrs – we only get stronger. Good news for us, bad news for you.

I am happy to respond to LC’s of 256Pm today. I believe that to get into material of a philosophical or theological nature that underlies the Stampede and illuminates those streams of thought feeding-it which are anti-religious or opposed-to-the-Church or what-have-you … that’s worthwhile to add some depth and perspective to what has become a general public discourse governed merely by the surfaces and appearances spun by the Stampede. And I believe it could be helpful to readers.

On that score, may I also say – thinking of comments made by LC on the Elmo article – that I hope here to offer my thoughts. In this I am not holding myself forth as an ‘educator’ (except by some tortuous word-parsing) but rather offer what thoughts and ideas I have as they have been filtered through my own mind. Readers are, of course, free to make of them what they will.

I will also repeat here: by now it should be clear to LC that in matters discussed on this site, I don’t treat commenting as humorous toss-offs as if we were all just hanging out at a bar (alcohol or coffee) and tossing-out this, that, or the other bit. Being – so it we were told – a Philosophy Major and an attorney, LC will understand perhaps how I can’t see where one can be capable of that level or discourse, involve oneself on a serious site, and then decide or prefer to simply put one’s party-hat on when making comments. Do these subjects on this site not engage his more serious capacities?

Now let’s to it.

First, I don’t think LC actually grasps what I mean by Multiplanar and Monoplanar. I envision human life and existence as being comprised of two Planes of Existence (or: PoE’s): there is the PoE of the this-worldly, the material and surfaces and appearances that we can apprehend with our five senses; and then there is the Meta (from the Greek ‘beyond’) PoE which is not accessible to our five senses but which nonetheless exists.

It is here that ‘religion’ enters into human existence and human life and human history: humans realize that there is somehow more going on than what their five senses can reveal to them (and which, then, their reaoning capability enables them to make sense of or find sense in.

Humans do this and have done so since as far back as we can determine: they seek Sense. And, also, they/we seek Meaning. These are irreducible facts of human existence: we are Sense-making and Meaning-needing beings.

And we have always – as far back as can be determined – inferred or perceived, with some sense other than the five physically-oriented senses, that there is another PoE. And we have tried to engage that PoE, somehow working our lives around its effects or working our lives into it.

That is what it means to be Multiplanar. And since LC has declared himself a “materialist” then he cannot – in this system – be Multiplanar. Materialism means accepting as real only those elements of existence that are ‘material and thus accessible to the five materially-oriented physical senses. Thus, by its own presumptions and logic and parameters materialism limits itself to the Monoplane.

He dismisses that The New Yorker cartoon. Neat. What else, really, can he do?

Yes, he has set it up so that he has claimed creds which – by withholding his actual name – cannot be dispositively established. Neat. Sly perhaps. He tries to minimize that fact by comparing it to the overall philosophical/theological problem: we can no more prove ‘him’ than we can ‘prove’ God so why don’t we just ‘believe’ him like we ‘believe’ God? Neat again. Except we all may have had some serious intimations of God’s existence whereas with LC’s material we have had demonstrable intimations that either a) he doesn’t have hefty chops as his claims would lead us to believe, or else b) even in the face of matters that he claims are vital and formidable (clerical sex abuse of children, the validity of Catholicism, Christianity, and religion itself) he likes to not-be-serious when he’s commenting. Readers are welcome to make of all that what they will.

Back on the Elmo article comments he had indeed mentioned (I didn’t respond because the thread was closed shortly thereafter) that “tired” idea that If there is a Design, then there must be a Designer. What is “tired” about that idea? Is it “tired” simply because it has been around for quite a while? Why would humans have kept it around for so long if it were clearly nonsensical to them? And Plato had figured that if we have the ability to reason-things-out then the world must be accessible to reason, must in some sense be ‘reasonable’ because otherwise there would be no sense in having the ability. And he then went Multiplanar by figuring that if there is ‘reason’ then there must be a Reason – a source of that reasoning capacity – thus theoretically connecting both the philosophical and the religious in some way.

Is the great age of this insight somehow a dispositive proof that it is “tired” and beneath the expertise of more modern humans?

He also misunderstands (unintentionally or otherwise) my Flight School Analogy. I am not saying that since we might see ourselves as ‘aircraft pilots’ (and simultaneously the ‘aircraft’ themselves – a complexity that seems to have escaped him) then there must be an Aircraft-Designer. What I am trying to convey in the Flight School Analogy is that there are parameters governing our actions as pilots that arise from the nature of the aircraft themselves: the human-being or human-self as an aircraft imposes certain rules on the human-pilot which, at their ultimate level, cannot be ignored without deranging the aircraft.

This is an analogy based in the Catholic Vision: God created us in His Image and we have a nature and an essence and a purpose and a Meaning – all four of which work to create a set of ‘operating instructions’ and ‘laws of aerodynamics’ that will contribute to the ‘flourishing’ that results from operating the aircraft in such a way as to fulfill them. Whereas ignoring those ‘laws of aerodynamics’ (or laws of ‘humodynamics’, if you wish) will simply create various levels of malfunction or dysfunction, along a spectrum from poorly-executed flight to catastrophic loss of controlled flight.

The current materialist secularist or Monoplanar vision will claim that humans can simply figure out how they ‘prefer’ to fly, because there are no ‘Meta’ rules because there is no Meta PoE and no Multiplane from which such parameters can originate. And this vision is quite sure that everybody can conduct life (individually and communally) just fine without any recourse either to any theoretical Meta/Multiplane or or to the specific Christian one that has received its most comprehensive expression in Catholic thought.

It might be argued that there is no ‘design’ in the world – and that what we are and what the world we have is … are simply the result of the evolutionary working-out of this and that capability. This is not the way humans originally saw themselves when they began their early ‘religious’ experiences.

Yes, it can be further argued that human merely ‘evolved’ a way to handle their existential anxieties and therefore created a (perhaps constructive) fantasy of a Meta/Multiplane that actually doesn’t exist and never existed but rather was simply a human creation based in (take your pick: fear, anxiety, status-seeking, or something else).

This requires the presumption that humans – all the way up until Dawkins or any other recent Monoplanar paragons were graduated from college – have been a mostly mushy and weak and fragile bunch. Which further presumes that ‘we’ know so much more than they did – as perhaps, on the Monplane, we do; but it doesn’t at all dispositively extinguish the possibility that what humans have sensed all the way up until just recently was actually out/up there and wasn’t simply a function of an “undigested bit of beef” or other psychological or emotion or neural dysfunction.

And also requires that humans be seen as essentially mushy, weak, and fragile and at the mercy of (fill in the blank: Nature, Evolution, Determinism, or something else on the Monoplane).

Further, that the Enlightenment (already gaga over the actual discoveries of material Science) then figured that the universe works according to Laws discoverable by Science, and that therefore God (in Whom they still sort-of believed) was merely a Watchmaker who built the instrument and then let it just go on ticking. Which lethally undermined any way to address the long-demonstrated human need for Meaning which could sustain humans through the numerous trials and tribulations of their lives and their existence (and introduced a profound anxiety into the ‘modern’ human consciousness, which one could either ignore or – as Camus and Sartre each proposed in their own way – simply ‘man-up’ and face the ultimate Meaninglessness of it all. Sartre even went gaga over such heroic ‘freedom’.

Now from all this one can go in a couple of possible directions: a) one can simply say that Meaninglessness and lack of Purpose is the way it is in human existence, and ‘real men’ just deal with it; or one can go in the direction of figuring that if there is a need for Meaning then there must (or might well) be a source (or Source) of that need for Meaning.

If you go with (a) then you reduce human existence to a foundation of sand (which is only fun when you’re at the beach in the summer and the weather stays nice and there are no earthquakes or tsunamis or sharks; which is to say: it only seems fun and workable if the money holds out, you’re young, society and culture more or less hold together the way you’re used to, and things go the way you’d like in your life). I

f you go with (b) you tap into profound human capacities that seem (and have for most of the species’ existence been seen) to respond to some Metaplanar source or Source. And (b) offers humans a sense of connection (refined in the Judeo-Christian system, among others) to a relationship. Nor can it be dispositively disproven that this relational/connective capacity and need – aimed at something Beyond – exists within humans merely because it was inscribed in them by that Beyond. Nor can it be dispositively proven that this capacity was merely imposed upon them by power-hungry shamans, witchdoctors, and – later – prophets and priesthoods and so on.

“Cows” do not “praise” God. Their ‘cowness’ is instinctual and unrecognized by them; lions and cows don’t spend much time wondering or worrying how to be a better lion or a better cow; nor do they spend much time on the state of cows or cowhood or lions or lion-hood generally.

But humans do. Whence that profound and unique characteristic? Did we a) merely ‘evolve’ a capacity for self-awareness and a thirst to some make progress in our lives – individually and communally? That’s a huge existential leap, and evolution is not known for rapid and huge existential leaps. And we are a rather young species. This strikes me – as one recent thinker put it – as claiming that a tornado one afternoon for a few minutes in a junkyard created a fully flight-worthy jumbo jet ready to go. If one can believe that, one certainly has no grounds for deriding the possibility that a rural carpenter can be resurrected.

Humans are not cows or any other type of (comparatively) simple fauna. We are sui generis – and not simply because the Church says so (indeed, the Church may simply have erected into doctrine what is fundamentally true about humans in the first place).

Nor would I use a “professional apologist” on AM talk-radio as a reliable source of whose-ever doctrine s/he was claiming to explain. (As I have said before in comments, however, even this or that individual priest may not have been sufficiently grounded in the fullness and depth of the Catholic Vision, and in an effort to be folksy and ‘accessible’ may wind up – like so many non-Catholic Christian apologists and preachers – hoping that the happier the happy-face, the more accurate the theology. I read recently that in the Anglican Church it has been proposed to replace the Stations of the Cross with an umpteen-point development plan proposed by a United Nations development committee of some sort.)

So while it is something to say that “religion is man-made and thus it has a purpose”, the assertion doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter at all. To use my 3-levels of rules from my Flight School Analogy, different religions – like different airlines – can fiddle with the corporate logos and the color of the crew uniforms and upholstery, and even pick and choose which type of aircraft to buy for its fleet, yet the nature of the human aircraft is – in the Catholic Vision – given Shape and Operating Parameters imparted by the very nature of the human being as Created in the Image of God. ‘Man’ may have ‘made’ the differently-logo’d and patterned religions, but religion – or Religion – itself goes way way beyond that and Beyond that: there is a demonstrable and sustained human capacity for seeking a Beyond and seeking Meaning and Purpose and some form of relationship with that Beyond … and when humans are deprived of any workable Sense of those capacities being engaged, humans by and large don’t work (or ‘fly’) well.

Therefore, I would say that any materialist/secularist/determinist Monoplanar philosophical approach that claims to be sufficient for humans and will actually deliver ‘progress’ and ‘liberation’ to them – if only the Beyond be eliminated – is going to wind up creating a monstrous and lethal regression in human affairs and the quality of human life and existence and history. And I think that this was evidenced most recently in Stalin’s efforts to get rid of religion in the USSR (until suddenly the Wehrmacht was at the gates of Moscow and he opened all the churches … for a while, anyway).

Thus that if any ‘philosophy’ trying to achieve or impose the Monoplanar as the sole source of human Meaning is going to be lethal, then any government trying to impose that Monoplanar is going to really amplify that existential lethality.

And as I said, it’s easy to figure life is pretty nice when you’re at the beach on a sunny day and the money holds out and the tectonic plates are behaving and the sharks are somewhere else – and thus either a happy-face or lantern-jawed Monoplanar philosophy will do the trick in life.

But that’s a regressive, un-developed or under-developed or inexperienced approach that isn’t going to sustain anybody when the presumedly benevolent material variables suddenly start going haywire; the graveyard may be a great place for a picnic with pals or personal-musical-device on a summer noontime; it’s a very different proposition when it’s twelve on a dark and stormy night and you’re all alone and your batteries have run out.

Is this some sort of ‘argument from fear’? No, it’s an argument from human experience: a) the great ocean of life is not simply a summer-afternoon thingie and one needs a stronger boat than a small personal sailboat if one is going to venture out onto it and stay afloat on it existentially with one’s sanity as well as one’s physical pieces intact. And b) I think it is theoretically and historically and philosophically insupportable to claim that we humans are simply mere creatures of the Monoplane who have somehow (and mistakenly) projected our own fears and hopes and loves onto a phantasmal Meta/Multiplane that we created out of our own heads and hearts.

And then there’s the problem of miracles. I won’t get into it too deeply in an already long comment, but I offer this readable 13-page report from a Protestant (link below). I don’t offer it as dispositive proof of anything particularly, but it seems to me that something is going on there, and has to be accounted-for.

That's good, Jimmy, let it all out, just let the festering hate and bigotry keep oozing out. The sooner your purge this poison from your heart and soul, the sooner you can heal, from your scars and your hatreds.

Your grievance has never been about the alleged crimes of abuse committed in or "by" the Church, it is just about your hatred of Catholics, period. You have no credibility as an objective commenter.

Just because one isn't a commie doesn't mean that one is a "right-winger".

Can you possibly dwell in any ideaology/philosophy that isn't extreme?

I have never suggested your churchs be closed. No one on our side would. As a matter of fact I'd probably demonstrate if any one tried to do that to you against your will, edited by moderator] but that hasn't happened. Pretend it is to your heart's content.

Katharine Culman, a now dead T.V. evangelist would look up into her key spot light, as if it was god's face; get teary eyed and say. "I believe in miracles!"

Well I don't. I am in awe of the Tao but where are the miracles? Not at Lourdes that's for sure. It's all pretty logical. Science is consistantly PROVEN correct and when it isn't ,it changes it's analysis. But not religion.

You know your diety, if it existed, could have saved the children at Auschwitz; but no, no miracles, just slaughter. After a quarter of a million died in the sunami, slaughter on a mass scale.That would seem to be the only "miraculous" act the "Good Shepard's" choosen to perform as of late.

But I'm too busy oozing hate.

I've never killed anybody; but then again I'm not worshiped as a god of love either.

This is what "your side" does. Just exchange the lefty players (atheists, lefty anarchists, feminists, gay activists, black racists, OWSers…), it all originates from the same evil any way you look at it. "Hail Satan", indeed.

Those crazy Roman emperors, the worst of them, were homosexual pagans. Funny you should invoke "them" to support your opposition to God.

Faithful Caholics are not afraid of death, pagans are. We are promised life after death, so, we welcome death as God sees fit to deliver it. Remember that whole "eternity" thingie?

Faithful Catholics, in or out of the Church, have not injured innocents. "Wolves in sheeps clothing", as we were warned, have done so. You're old enough to know the difference, but, acknowledging that fact would severely undermine your opposition to the Church, and her faithful adherents. Just as the homosexual priests that abused minors are not representative of all homosexuals, neither are unfaithful Catholics (really another oxymoron) representative of all Catholics. Stop the nonsense already and elevate the debate to an adult level.

Another fact for you: science is more consistently wrong, than right. It has to change, a lot, to accomodate its errors. The Truth, as delivered by Jesus Christ (the Word), has never changed. Truth is Fact.

Stop lying, you continue to undermine yourself, and you insult the readers. You use lies, distortions, part-truths, misinformation, extrapolations and distortions as your tools to support your bigoted position.

Man-up, if you truly believe your drivel, support it like a grown man and not a petulant child.

Stop cowardly attacking opposition posters while you regularly and excessively cheerlead for your comrads – you're not bullying a captive body of students or client-defendents here.

You've had your derrier kicked all over the place by the sheer logic of your opposition on TMR (embarrased much?), so, now you're on the usual lefty personal attack crusade.

Have anything of any interest, that you haven't hastily hodge-podged out of your text books (and stripped from Google), to contribute that may actually relate to the subject article, "tough guy"?

Let me help you out, look at that picture of Isely- with his deer in the headlights glare; "that" is one of yours, and is a perfection reflection of what a liar, and a LIE, looks like when the fable that is the medias and the lefts (your snappy-happy "family") Church abuse narrative unravels in front of the world and there's no place to hide anymore.

The lefts "broad brush" paints all their opposition as racists, right-wingers, "imaginers", "flat-earthers", homophobes, sexists, NAZI's, Islamophobes, anti-Immigrant, animal-killing nature-haters, and on and on (I know I've missed many other their baseless charges) and normal people (not extremists on either side) are suppossed to take you seriously?

Not a chance, sorry.

Leftists have provided more than enough documentation to support the fact that they do actually hate their opposition and act against them, whom they consider to be Judeo-Christian religious and laity (especially Catholics), political and ideaological conservatives and libertarians, constitutionalists, capitalists, upper economic classes ("war on 1%", really?), caucasians- especially males, "soccer moms", the military, business (from financial to energy), the "south", the family, and pro-lifers (from abortion to euthanasia).

You can't deny the lefts war on everything historically American, and good. You can't deny that you wish to "transform" America from a free society based on God, family and patriotism to a Socialist/Totalitarian (Statist) atheist regime, as you all openly applaud your current "Kings" numerous illegal transgressions ("…what law, there's a law for/against that…"?) that are designed to do just that.

Just admit your intentions, we aready have the evidence (the kind that has never been introduced into any abuse case against a priest) of your hatred for your opposition.

I couldn’t help but notice that ‘Karen’ is taken to task by ‘Learned Counsel’ in an abrupt one-liner from 919PM on the 13th that apparently was triggered by her complimentary comment to me from 1214AM on the 13th.

Apparently LC is miffed that she doesn’t do more “original thinking”.

I do not here presume to speak for ‘Karen’ but this “original thinking” bit requires comment. Apparently – and so very neatly – the philosophical approach LC has found most congenial is this: if it’s ‘old’ and “tired” then anything that is a) newer that b) you can come up with or “prefer” is going to be ever so much better (as well as ever so much more convenient for one’s personal purposes both as to i) being freeeeee and ii) not having to explain the coherence or rationale or even rationality of one’s preferred ‘philosophical vision’.

Thus – let me propose – we can make airplanes out of ice-cream because a) as an idea it’s not “tired” but is rather fresh; b) it’s ‘creative’ because nobody has ever thought about it before (they were all so stupid or oppresses by then-reigning paradigms); c) it’s ‘transgressive’ because it works against the interests of the corporate-industrial complex; and d) you can eat it if you get hungry on long flights.

This is – you can insist – your own personally preferred ‘philosophy’ or ‘idea’ and so anybody who asks any questions is merely launching a personal assault on your ‘freedom to prefer’, masking that assault in the mere words of reason and of rational questions about your idea.

Thus, as long as your magpie-like conceptual construction is fresh and new and creative and transgressive then it’s “original thinking” and anything else is not.

And that’s not your problem but instead is the problem of all those who don’t see its marvelousness.

The ultimate self-licking airplane.

Such progress.

But maybe it will get a passing grade in the Harvard Philosophy Department these days.

The Nazi Church connection has never been disproven. Except to avid Catholic believers who "want" it not to be true. The rest of the world remembers the connection quite realisticly. It happened. the "rat line" out of Germany through Italy moved many Nazi's including Dr.Mengele and Eichmann many many others to South and North America after the war.

I have no idea what publicly publion just said. New ideas and original thinking can be many thinks. They do not have to be absurd imaginations like ice cream airplanes. I was criticizing Karen for too often posting cheers. Delphin does it too like some weak little guy standing next to a tough guy saying, "Yea. Yea. That's right."

Well, this is fine because I am still processing publicly publion's extensive last post that he unfortunately undermined with his insistently again bringing up Lourdes. Because there's just something about it. The miracles thing just reminds me that despite what intelligent things this guy may say, he believes in miracles! Even when I was a hard-core believing catholic, I never went for miracles. Miracle-believers just don't seem worth talking to.

If JR has reviewed the link I provided to the Lourdes situation and can point out how – using that or any other relevant material he cares to reference – that “it’s all pretty logical” then let’s see that.

The following sentence in that first paragraph about “Science” is not coherently related to the first sentence; perhaps it’s simply off the first 3×5 in the ‘science and religion’ section of the shoebox.

Otherwise, I no more trust JR’s ability to recognize logic or to function logically than I recognize his ability to comprehend the characteristics of a competent university education.

And we notice yet again the use of eccentric or non-mainstream sources (here: some television “evangelist”) as the basis for making rather substantive or sweeping assertions about Christianity or Catholicism or religion or God or (fill in the blank).

I myself do not subscribe to the primary characterization or diagnosis of “hate”. I think there are other explanations. But the material we get is sometimes useful for our larger purposes here. I liked the projective bit about “the crazy Roman emperor”, though; as I have said, JR gives us so much to consider when he least intends to.

A MINORITY of "traitor" priests/bishops, all, just like those homosexual predators that betrayed their community in and out of the Church, collaborated with Commies, and other criminal elements. Perfection in the Church (and certainly out of it) was never anticipated, or possible, from anyone- only Jesus met that standard.

Broad-brush, my friend….big, wide strokes. Do those also work for the lefties vast array of despots?

"We" are way grasping for straws – are you absolutely sure you don't hate Catholics because your info-fact "stretches" are quite unreasonable, and indefensable?

I'd much rather talk about the Fact that Catholic Charities are the most generous private organization caring for the oppressed and indigent, worldwide. That is our Majority history. Let's not cherry-pick the past two millenia of Church history – point is, there was never any worldwide human institution as charitable, and good and honest ever before, or since.

I can't think of any of your Communist-Atheist organizations, combined, that come close.

Meanwhile, none of your gang can effectively respond to even one of your oppositions' arguments or concepts regarding the integrity of the media's treatment of the Church abuse matter as pertains to the Isely debacle - are your "…arms just too tired to keep boxing with God…"?

For the sane ones: A quick read of the Dolan deposition from February is absolutely essential reading for those of you who wish to see rational and brilliant adult men (Dolan and Lococo) handle a slimey, whiney, slippery, blatantly dishonest attorney (I know, all redundant), Elf-boy Anderson – especially funny are pages 95-98 and 106.

If this is the best of the left, they need all the help from the media, the UN, advocacy and entitlement groups, bloggers, ambulance chasers, Satan himself, and all the rest of their misfits, as they can possibly get.

If anyone paints with a broad brush here it's you. Them what smelts 'em delts 'em.

Catholic Charities only proves how much wealth the church has. Charity needs to begin at home by compensating the victims created by the church before they spread their wealth like Lady Bountiful. Pay your bills.

We are informed now by LC that he “has no idea” what I just said (meaning, I presume, my comment of the 14th at 256PM).

I shall try to help out.

What caught my eye was that one commenter was told to do more “original thinking” by a commenter (LC) who has rather voluminously quoted other writers at length – and possibly a chunk of a textbook (on Kant) as well. And that struck me as noteworthy.

I then went on to point out – from assorted recent bits of LC’s material on this site – that the fact that a thought is “tired” or ‘old’ doesn’t at all suffice to establish its invalidity, and indeed its venerable age and usage might actually be taken as a sign of that idea’s acceptance by a large chunk of humanity over a long period of time, for reasons that should not be dismissed lightly and out of hand.

I used a rather “absurd” example (certainly it was deliberately vivid, in order to make my point) so as to highlight the dynamic I see relevant to LC’s recent material on his own philosophical position: that ‘evolution’ requires at least as much presumption and conjecture as any Metaplanar/ ‘religious’ explanations; that his position is his ‘preference’ and thus in objecting to this or that aspect of it in terms of internal coherence and consequences I am merely personally attacking him out of my own personal “argument from personal incredulity”; and the list goes on.

For that matter, I would add – since we’re back on the subject – that up until the 18th century philosophical thought used all of Aristotle’s Causes (formal, material, final and efficient), whereas since Newton’s scientific work and then during the 19th century with Marx and others, the materialist philosophical explanation limits itself largely to only one of those Causes, i.e. the efficient: as if in merely understanding how some entity has mechanistically (so to speak) come to exist, then one comprehends its entirety – leaving aside its formal essence, its purpose for existing, and the material(s) out of which the entity was fashioned. Since philosophy began to derange itself in order to conform to material Science, the rest of the Causes – which are categories and concepts of long-standing in Western philosophy – have been ignored because (we might say) they are “tired” and perhaps ‘no longer relevant’.

This profound self-limitation that Philosophy has perpetrated upon itself leaves it basically limited to the scope and capability of the natural sciences (which, rightly for themselves, are limited to the efficient and perhaps the material elements of Causality).

So LC is welcome to decide to philosophically embrace and “prefer” whatever system he chooses, but it is well within bounds to then raise relevant questions about any elements of his stated position that don’t seem to cover the philosophical ground well for one reason or another. Is this new or news to him?

And while I have noticed that LC has been moved to object at least twice now to commenters who post a compliment to me – and in this instant case he writes that ‘Karen’ has been “too often posting cheers” – yet he himself has apparently found no irritation in the reality of JR’s own content-less and simplistic “cheers” to LC’s own material. (And, indeed, in characterizing ‘Karen’ LC rather acutely and adroitly describes what some may well be thinking about various bits of JR’s material.)

In fact LC recently took me to task for not coming-back-at a commenter who connected me, if memory serves, to college-level teaching. In LC’s view, I should have clearly and quickly disabused that commenter somehow of such a connection. (I might ask: On what grounds?)

LC then mimics me by claiming that I have undermined my last extensive comment here (the contents of which he is still trying to grasp) because I brought up Lourdes and the goings-on there … and – but of course – my raising the question of miracles in relation to Lourdes in and of itself proves that I “believe in” miracles (had he not noticed the rather clearly-expressed tentativeness of my comment in that regard?) and therefore I – as a “miracle-believer” – am – in LC’s opinion – “not worth talking to”. (Which, by the nicest coincidence, serves to absolve him of the need to examine, comprehend, or respond to my material – neat!)

From which, I gather, LC does not believe in miracles – and that would be because he has definitively ruled out the possibility of their existence. Or “prefers” to, at least. Fine and dandy for him (and Catholic readers might well imagine that the Church dodged a bullet when he left seminary training).

I make no pretense of completely comprehending some of the material that has come out of Lourdes (I provided that initial link; search engines can provide links to the Lourdes medical bureau record-reports as well). But unless we wish to posit long-sustained and extended delusion and outright professional incompetence or lunacy by assorted medically- and scientifically-trained persons who have conducted research and field work there – which they then actually published for all to see – then clearly “something is going on there” which cannot be explained by current medical or scientific praxis, knowledge, and paradigms.

None of the material in the above-paragraph can – nor do I claim it does – dispositively prove the existence of “miracles” there. But rather serious and deep consideration and examination is certainly justified. Which is what I did and do recommend.

As for LC’s personal preference not to “go for” miracles, we can simply add that to the list of his philosophical preferences, and readers may make of all that what they will.

….and, there's no problem in believing that you can redefine marriage from one man and one woman to whatever the sexual relationship flavors of the day are, or reassign your gender to suit your mood that day (it's "self-identifying" day!), and believing that, and all your other little fairytales, will ever become normalized - that does not mean that the other 97% of us, and the natural world, should be expected to bear that unnatural burden as a truth.

Nature determined you would remain at 2-3% of the population, regardless of your legal pair-bonding status. Being a rarity in nature is a gift; think of your status as being a lucky four leaf clover or blue diamond, embrace it, and stop trying to blend in with the 97% (big time PRETEND) of the blades of grass or lumps of coal.

Redefining marriage to accomodate same sex unions is as silly as redefining Catholicism to include Atheism, or saying the hue white now includes black – just absolute polar opposites.

Gay marriges are real ask Spain and Canada and Denmark and New York and Mexico City and California. etc. Where do you "live" bf nowhere?

And on the front page of L.A. Times we see the further development of the "Religious Freedom is being challanged" campaign a very expensive PR campaign that's being created and pushed by your church. What's really being challenged is Religions ever present attempts to maintain it's control over everything it can politically.

It's like the old days with fish on fridays. Public schools were pressed to offer flounder in order not to offend a long dead popes stupid, don't eat meat on fridays mandate.( Evidently his family owned the fish industry in Milan or Naples.)

A mandate that was thrown out finally by the church (because it was so stupid). Hopefully giving the sinners' in hell for that one mortal sin a get out of Hades free card.

What about god; jesus; the holy ghost; the virgin birth; adam and eve; original sin; the crucifixtion; the ressurection; the ascension, the assumption, life after death;purgatory; hell; and D's boyfriend satan? Fantasies all.

What's going on at Lourdes? Fraud that's what and fraud is no miracle. Just think of the money that's rolled through that town. I had a very devoted aunt and uncle who lit up every time they talked about their vacations in Lourdes. Magic is such a huge part of religion. And everyone knows magic is a fraud.

In his efforts to come up with a couple of clever quickies JR actually provides us an opportunity to review a couple of classic popular confusions, while also reminding us of just what we deal with in so much of his material.

He had relatives – but of course – who had actually been to Lourdes; indeed they used to take “vacations” there. One can only try to imagine people going there for “vacations”: it isn’t a bustling tourist spot like Atlantic City or the Grand Canyon or the Riviera or Paris. Indeed, if you aren’t going there for your own medical problems or to study the goings-on, why would anyone simply go there for “vacations”? But this is a typical JR-bit: he may not have any worthwhile thoughts, but he just happens to have either been physically-present at the site or is closely related to people who were … and in his mind, that constitutes some sort of worthwhile basis for input. Which input will constitute pronouncements which people simply have to believe because (even if he can’t think too well) he would never lie.

Readers are welcome to make what they will of that Rube Goldberg conceptual scheme.

They might even wish to consider just how advanced (or not) that scheme stands when compared to “magic” and magical-thinking and the basic presumption that mere physical presence somehow imparts a trumping authority to pronounce upon whatever one was merely in-the-physical-presence-of. I recall again the cargo-cult natives who presumed that if you built your own ‘radio set’ out of coconuts and vines, and mimicked closely the movements and noises you had observed, then you too could command the great canoes and the silver birds. And on top of that, one might imagine that such cargo-cult natives, having spent a lot of time at the beach or the airstrip watching stuff, would be indubitably more authoritative in delivering pronouncements on the overall history and meaning of World War 2 in the Pacific or anywhere else.

There is a substantive and vital conceptual distinction between “magic” and “religion”. The former tries to control the Beyond through various manipulative efforts; the latter refers to the effort – individually and culturally – to try and work out a relationship with that Beyond, structuring individual and societal life around that relationship (as best one could infer the elements of that Beyond and thus the characteristics of that Beyond and the consequent effects on the ‘relationship’).

The two distinct concepts reflect two distinct characteristic energies within the human being.

And those human-beings have brought those energies to all of their efforts to live in a beyond-physical universe, where – they it seemed strongly to them – there exist elements and energies and forces beyond the purely material. The Church – like all religions – has always had to deal with the problem of humans’ ‘magical’ substrate and how to manage that stubborn human characteristic in relation to the genuinely Christian approach to God and the Beyond. Do you try to totally stamp out the ‘magic’ (and run the risk of doing violence in the process)? Do you simply let peoples do what they want (and run the risk of diluting the entire Christian identity)? Do you let the Wheat grow with the Tares and hope for the best? The history of Christianity has been deeply interwoven with this issue, and various historical efforts in this or that era reflect various efforts to try this or that method of dealing with the problem.

The Church – having brought so many pagan and even magically-inclined tribes into the fold in the early missionary efforts – sought to make clear the difference between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ (and, not to put too fine a point on it, not just any ‘religion’ but Christianity). Indeed, we might consider that the expansion of the Roman (distinct in some clear ways from the Spanish) Inquisition from heresy to witchcraft was precisely intended to address the public reality of large numbers of recently-Christianized populations trying to keep their old “magic” and simply layer-over that “magic” a veneer of Christianity. (We recall that it was only with the Protestant Reformation that ‘witchcraft’ became a primary concern of religious authorities.)

And there is also a clear conceptual distinction between “magic” and “miracle”: Magic seeks to manipulate and control forces that are susceptible to the manipulation of material elements on the terrestrial Plane; a miracle (very much a Judeo-Christian concept) is a suspension of the laws of the terrestrial Plane of Existence through the authority and will of a God (benevolent if still mysterious) precisely as an expression of His Will and Love.

All of these elements and forces are involved in whatever is happening and has happened for the past 150 or so years at Lourdes. And this accusation of “fraud” is anchored merely in the Marxy materialistic presumption that since ‘we all know’ that there is no Beyond then the only working element and motivation for all of the goings-on must be the commission of “fraud”; “religion” being – according to Marx – merely “the opiate of the masses”. (One wonders what Marx would make of a personal-preference for drug-use as an expression of one’s personal freedom and liberation.)

Lastly, we can see in all of this a vivid example of the darker opportunities that the Internet has created (and this ties in with an Ecker comment recently on this site in which Ecker urges us to look at the comments to an article that caught his fancy): internet commentary is largely open to anybody who wants to toss anything at any subject. It therefore becomes the responsibility of the reader to sift through the various bits on offer to find comments – not necessarily in favor of one’s preferred position – that offer some opportunity to learn or move the discourse forward in some worthwhile way.

Moreover, and specifically in regard to the Catholic Abuse Matter, one can see how the Stampede has always been so deeply enmeshed with the Internet: having raised up the Church (in this instance; but it could be any target that somehow becomes raised-up for attention) as a topic on the internet, then a broad-based mélange of interests might be attracted to the target in order to toss whatever coconuts they care to toss. Thus in Catholic Abuse Matter, a review of ‘comments’ so often reveals material emanating from anti-Catholic or anti-religious or anti-Beyond or anti-authority or anti-male-priesthood) or anti-(fill in the blank) … much of it simply using the gravamen of the actual abuse-charges merely as a pretext.

The result of which is that inattentive observers can get the impression that there are many many persons with emotionally-charged (not to necessarily imply well thought-out) things to say about the Catholic Abuse Matter – when in actuality that tight-focus on ‘abuse’ isn’t actually driving as many of the comments as inattention might lead one to imagine.

So I think it is helpful to review comments generated by this or that article, especially on some of the more general sites or sites that are already known to be hospitable to a certain level of comment-making. If you approach those comments with the purpose of trying to enter into mental-world from which those comments arise, you can soon realize just what dark pools are ‘out there’ in the Webverse just waiting to be tapped by enterprising and slyly calculating manipulators.

But beware: while we are on the beach or at the airfield trying to work with complex quantities of serious material, there are – just beyond the tree-line – all sorts of natives who have convinced themselves that the reason their mimicry of talking into coconuts-tied-to-vines is not bringing them the same profusion must be that we are somehow interfering with their own “magic”.

My Aunt and Uncle Sally and Jim Ratigan of Hyde Cheshire England were daily mass goers. My Uncle Jim served mass into his '80's. He lived 2 houses away from St. Cuthberts, if I remember the church's name correctly. My parents were married there, in Hyde and when the younger altar boys failed to show up to serve at mass off Jim would go.

He and Sally not only spent their favorite vacations at Lourdes. Vacation being defined by me as 2 weeks off from work; once a year. They may have refered to it as a "pilgrimage" . They also went to Cro Patrick in western Ireland to walk barefoot up that "sacred" dormant volcano. (Something pagans had done in the pre Christian era. The Church had veneered over ancient pagan sites, various sacred wells or springs on cro Patrick, Christian myths, (excuse my redundency: Christian/myth.) They were both very very devoted magic/miracle believing Catholics.

If using personal connections to Catholic holy sites is verbotten to me or somehow proves my inability to "think" clearly according to the great "clarifier",you. What can I say? You' ve told me off. I'm stupid. Happy now?

Don't you think with 5 million "visitors" per annum everyone who is Catholic or was raised Catholic knows someone who's been to Lourdes then "vacated" Lourdes? Do you ever, ever, ever tire of being pedantic and dull?

Well, good to know that publicly publion thinks that philosophy that departs from Aristotle, in fact any philosophy from the 18th century on is "deranged." That is the most absurd statement by publicly publion . . . in a strong field, I might add. That just is not true. Philosophy has deranged itself, according to him, by taking account of advances in scientific knowledge. Publicly pubion has here revealed a very serious bias against being informed by science and thus about reality. And this disconnectedness with reality retards and ruins the conversation.

In the history of Lourdes, there have been 67 church-approved declared miracles. It is estimated that in recent years about 5 million pilgrims a year visit the shrine at Lourdes. Over the past 150 years, it is also estimated that more than 200 million pilgrims have visited Lourdes. Roughly, then, you are talking about a success rate of .00003% or 1 out of every 3 million. This is what one might expect by chance or placebo because the cures are for afflictions cancer which tends to sometimes spontaneously go into remission. No one has ever re-grown a severed limb, for example. That would be unambiuous. But miracles are always ambiguous with some uncertain circumstances.

Davud Hume said,"'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish….' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion." From David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby Bigge, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 114-5. That is the thing about the laws of nature, that they cannot be suspended. They never are, let alone suspended in your or my favor. Anyone claiming a miracle is either lying or under a grave misapprehension.

Publicly Publion is neither of these though. He is a rhetorical genius who in summary says that he does not attempt to dispositively prove the existence of “miracles.” He does however think that "rather serious and deep consideration and examination is certainly justified." Boy, what a hedge! Well, keep collecting data on Lourdes. They are coming in, just veeeeery sloooowly.

“Derangement” means “thrown into disorder” or knocked off-kilter from its foundations. And yes, I would say – and have gone to great lengths in prior comments on this site to explain how – Philosophy was knocked off its foundations once it began to go gaga over simple physical and material Science and try to conform itself to Science by confining itself to the purely material Plane of Existence (or, to use my term, the Monoplane). LC’s delivery of a mere sweeping epithet to the effect that my statement is “absurd” and even “the most absurd statement” I have ever made can be left hanging there, un supported, out on the limb where LC put it as his contribution to the philosophical discourse here. Along with the follow-up faux-analytical comment that he has apparently made this judicious but difficult assessment of his from “a strong field” (of my overall tally of statements LC will epithetically assert and declare to be absurd).

Nor does it seem to strike him as relevant that Philosophy has indeed been “taking into account advances in scientific knowledge” – as he himself says. Because if Philosophy is not merely an adjunct of material and physical Science, then there quickly arises the rather core Question: why should advances on the Monoplane in regard to material and physical discoveries be allowed to exercise such a substantial (and deranging) effect on Philosophy? (The Question is not meant to be rhetorical.)

But this assertion of LC’s then quickly lubricates the following Rube Goldberg construction: since I have “revealed a very serious bias against being informed by science and thus about reality” then my “serious bias” goes and “ruins the conversation” – thus absolving him of having to answer or substantively address my material. Neat – but we’ve seen Play run this before.

Thus quickly on to Lourdes.

He raises a point I discussed in one of the first comments responding to his raising of the Lourdes matter: there have been very few miracles formally declared to be such by the Church; 67 miracles out of the 5 million pilgrims who visit Lourdes annually, according to his numbers. (We could get picky here and wonder if that 5 million has been constant over the past 150 years or so; or whether all the pilgrims come looking for a miraculous cure or merely to pray or put themselves somehow in the presence or location where God seems to work in a special way. But let’s not at this point, and go with his numbers.)

He then tries to reduce it to a statistical “success rate”, calculating (on the basis of the numbers I have discussed in the immediately preceding paragraph above) that the “success rate” is therefore 1 in 3 million. That wouldn’t be good in any industry or business, certainly.

But then we aren’t talking about an industry or a business here. (Unless we go with the JR “fraud” bit, but if we were to go with that, then why should the purportedly fraudulent Church so grossly limit its possibilities by certifying only 67 miracles? But LC seems to be going in a different direction from JR here, so let’s go with LC and see what happens.) We are talking about the causative interaction of the Metaplane and the Monoplane, or even of the Metaplane on the Monoplane, which moves us through the territory of Philosophy and into Religion (and Catholicism, specifically). What unaided human reason can tell us here is that there are insufficient purely-material or Monoplanar causes to explain a demonstrated phenomenon (or a number of phenomena) and that something else therefore has to be going on in terms of causation.

LC is going to go in a direction I specifically addressed in prior comments: he will claim and/or infer that the recorded ‘cures’ are attributable to other mechanisms of causation. Has he read the case reports to see the number of these miracles that are not merely reducible to alternative mechanisms of healing or ‘cure’ by means of spontaneous remission or some happy-face improvement in an individual’s psycho-emotional condition? Surely a reading of the extant case material reveals the serious physical pathologies whose disappearance cannot be explained by trained medical and scientific personnel. And what’s more: even if there were only one such miracle, then we are facing something beyond the explanatory parameters of material Science to explain in terms of causation. So even only one miracle creates – for the genuine researcher – as much of a difficulty as a whole bunch of miracles.

And we are advised that “miracles are always ambiguous with some uncertain circumstances”. “Always”? Where did he get the authority or grounds to make that rather unambiguous declaration?

I include at the bottom of this comment a link to the explanation by the chief reviewing doctor as to the criteria involved in examination by the Lourdes Medical Bureau. And a second link to Wiki that also includes brief descriptions of some of the more notable miracles and provides further links. And a third link that covers many of the cases in more specific detail.

Dragooning Hume into this isn’t quite sufficient at all: Hume refers to “testimony” – meaning persons simply stating what they have seen (or think they have seen); something akin to what we might today call ‘hearsay’ in the legal forum. But what we are dealing with in the Lourdes medical reports – the entire phenomenon long post-dates Hume (who died in 1776) – extends to formal recorded medical analysis and investigation, covering the increasing competence in the medical field from the later 19th century up to the present day. Science and medicine have come a long way since Hume’s day in their ability to assess and examine. (And – let me save some time here – No, that does not mean that therefore Philosophy should indenture itself to material and physical Science.)

We also note that Hume is using the example of “a dead man restored to life” and there have been no resurrections claimed or certified at Lourdes. Hume as a philosopher may wish to adopt a ‘scientific’ stance in regard to the resurrection of Christ and claim (assert, really) that as far as he’s concerned he will “always reject the greater miracle” (i.e. resurrection) and go with some form of deception in the report.

And Hume further concludes that this discussion he is conducting concerns his own approach to miracles. His “belief and opinion” cannot be ‘commanded’ toward the acceptance of the miraculous unless it would be a greater miracle that the person making the report would deceive him (a polite circumlocution that pretty much reduces the set of such possible deceivers to zero). Thus does Hume simply share with us his personal approach to assessing miracles – or, more specifically, the miracle of resurrection).

So the quote from Hume gives us a) only Hume’s opinion and b) doesn’t cover the type of ‘cure’ miracles we see at Lourdes which c) in any case begin almost a century after his own death and continue on into the modern age’s medical analysis and diagnostic capabilities. The careful reference establishing the Hume quote is a nice touch, though.

But then it’s anybody’s guess how LC gets from what Hume actually says here to LC’s own immediately-following assertion – as if in summation of Hume – that the laws of nature “cannot be suspended” and “they never are” and that therefore “anyone claiming a miracle is either lying or under a grave misapprehension”. (And once again, the Church surely seems to have dodged at least one bullet in the past couple of decades when LC left seminary.)

The whole concept of miracle in the Catholic religion is that God does indeed precisely ‘suspend the laws of nature’ which – it is freely admitted and indeed insisted-upon by Catholicism – is a suspension that no human can effect on his/her own authority and power. (Again, to save some time here: Yes, God can work a miracle through a particular holy-person, and indeed such miracles are required as part of the canonization process, but the miraculous power is God’s, not the individual’s.)

Yes, I do “hedge” – if by that we mean that I point out that “something is going on there” at Lourdes and readers are free to examine the material for themselves and judge for themselves. I will not make the ‘argument from authority’ and simply insist that all readers agree to believe that there are some mighty curious events going on at Lourdes.

LC has made that ‘argument from authority’ however, and has done so in his own comment here. And has yet to demonstrate just what ‘authority’ of any sort he has to make such sweeping and conclusive declarations. Unless it be the authority of his own ‘preference’. Which he is welcome to do.

Nor, as I said, does the material have to come in quickly or slowly. There’s enough in the records of Lourdes now to strongly suggest that at least one miracle has occurred there at some point. And given the remarkably sweeping nature of LC’s assertions, one is all it will take.

Don't you think it would have been 'nice' if the Holy Virgin had made a personal miraculous appearence at Aucshwitz and disrupted a few train lines or maybe have stopped the xcyclon z cannisters from being delivered?

Just to clear up a point from a previous publicly publion comment on this article: I wrote about Karen because her cheering was outweighing any other commenting by her. So I identified her as a cheer leader and suggested some original thinking. No action required for publicly publion. And by “original thinking,” I simply mean writing some thoughts beyond mere praise and admiration. You know, stuff that requires thinking and not just starry-eyed wonder. Not that she or I need to come here writing absolutely original, novel, a priori ideas influenced by and attributable in whole or in part to no one but the self. That is unreasonable and extreme. I would never have suggested it. With respect to Delphinius, a, um, there I would like to see you distancing yourself or at least ignoring him but you sometimes build on points he makes. Delphin should be treated only with ridicule and scorn for his political and social views. Even when he cannot express himself very well, we all know that at which he is getting. When he cheers publicly publion and boasts about my perceived defeats, he succeeds only in being annoying, not in being correct or interesting or amusing. The other comments he makes are disgusting and wrong.

Also, while writing this I just thought about the ice cream airplane. No original thinking there. A silly example that amounts in the end to another excuse to use the often-used expression "self-licking," This is a concept that the author seems to have contemplated quite a bit lately because he has written it into several comments.

We are now advised that L-C has preferred to appoint himself comment-gatekeeper or control-tower and advises me that there was “no action required” for me to discuss his (public) comment upon Karen’s (public) comment. That’s not an ‘argument from authority’; that’s the Wig of Authority.

He has now taken to ‘suggesting’ better routes for commenters to take (Karen should do some original thinking). On the authority of his Wig, of course. I can see no other source for it in any of his material here. And might we infer that LC considers JR a suitable example of an appropriate mix between “cheering” and “original thinking”? Surely this – at least – is a question he should be able to answer.

Delphin (now re-named “Delphinius”) is informed that LC would “like to see” Delphin “distancing yourself or at least ignoring him” (meaning – I think – me) but – alas – Delphin seems rather “to build on points he makes”. Oh my – Delphin has been instructed; which is better – admittedly – than a raised eyebrow from commenter Ecker, which is usually a warning.

Or perhaps – LC’s subtlety far outpaces his language skills here – perhaps I am being warned to stay away from Delphin’s material. Oh my – is it then I rather than Delphin who have been advised? Apparently Delphin has succeeded in annoying LC – which apparently is a type of frustration that is unpleasant and/or unfamiliar to LC, sturdy and successful survivor of both elite university Philosophy and of law-school though he (allegedly) is. Apparently then, we are all dragooned into being annoyed at Delphin because LC is annoyed at Delphin. This is right up there with commenter Ecker dragooning all ‘activists’ in the country into his grand-fleet which he shall vengeantly lead against the papal Hirohito and all his leering minions.

And, having given further thought, the elite Philosophy Major and practicing attorney has also become attracted to the “self-licking” phrase. Readers will recall my identifying it quite some time ago as a phrase from Pentagon and military usage – the “self-licking ice cream cone”. But a) isn’t aware of that or has forgotten it; and b) is more interested in just the “self-licking” bit – which seem to tickle his conceptual fancies for some reason.

To repeat: the dynamic described is that of a program which is ostensibly designed to address and solve a problem but instead continues somehow to refresh or sustain the problem, and thus in ostensibly functioning as ostensibly intended-to (i.e. to solve the problem) it instead simply sustains the problem (and thereby sustains itself).

Since nobody has ever thought about it before and since it is surely not “tired” and old, then the ice-cream airplane certainly does fit LC’s criteria for “original”, as far as I can determine from his material and his stated parameters on this site. What we are actually seeing in this comment of his at 724AM today is – once again – LC’s befuddlement that ‘words’ and ‘concepts’ won’t stay where he wants them to stay.

In a sly defense, he has in a prior comment on this thread complimented me (the Teeth of Sly Nastiness chattering like cheap castanets in the bouffant Wig of Educated Niceyness) for being “a rhetorical genius” (and nothing more).

But that’s not really true. It’s not that I am merely and ‘rhetorically’ playing with words; it’s that I am following out (as LC has not followed out) the implications and concepts contained in the words and concepts he deploys. Apparently Harvard Philosophy profs never had the temerity to perpetrate such invasive and insulting and esteem-threatening outrages on the weekend papers or term-papers of their students; profs at Harvard, apparently, are paid the big bucks to affix the proverbial gold-star to the forehead of each ‘consumer’ in the class. And LC here illustrates floridly the result of such a philosophy of education.

As with JR, the incompetent lion-tamer blames a) the lions (his words) for getting away from him in the center ring, and b) the onlookers for having the hateful temerity to notice it.

"To repeat: the dynamic described is that of a program which is ostensibly designed to address and solve a problem but instead continues somehow to refresh or sustain the problem, and thus in ostensibly functioning as ostensibly intended-to (i.e. to solve the problem) it instead simply sustains the problem (and thereby sustains itself)."

Wow! Publicly publion just blew a circuit. I did not need that ranting description of the "SLIC." (I use an acronym because now I know that you borrowed the term from the feds and they love acronyms.) I love how you assume that something that I do not like or agree with must be something that I just do not comprehend. You are like those people who, when no one laughs at their jokes, assume that an explanation of the humor is required.

Well, the rest of the post is just rhetorical, pseudo intellectual, ad hominem, attack stuff that really has become the modus operandi of the wounded cub-lion. See you at the next Harvard reunion! Oh wait, that is my alma mater . . . and not yours. You talk about it so much that I thought you studied there. Alma Mater floreat, Quae nos educavit; Caros et commilitones, Dissitas in regiones Sparsos, congregavit. I will be in Cambridge enjoying some of my dear old friends and you will be . . . well, here on the internet with the quality of your writing and tantalizing thoughts of miracles that may have occur. No, I know that you have a life because you said so in one of your posts.

By the way, Paris has a population of over 2 million people and has, among many other attractions, the Louvre. Paris has the most hotels in France for obvious reasons. Today, Lourdes has a population of around 15,000 but, despite being a small rural town, is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season. With about 270 hotels, Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels per square kilometre in France after Paris. (Wikipedia) And publicly publion claims that Lourdes is not a business. Want to buy a virgin mary cigarette lighter? Go to Lourdes! And you will have to stay in one of their hotels because there is nothing else around. The catholics and often their church have always been in business selling indulgences, relics, images, art, jewelry, icons and much much more! That is why the catholics lost the no graven images part of the 2nd commandment of the decalogue. (Exodus 20:4)

And now the church and her most sympathetic simps are selling the church as victim. The victim of a sinister movement of colluding deviants, calculating lawyers, and biased media bent on getting money for nothing and destroying the church. But take heart, they say! The church can take it and she has corrected any and all problems and is fighting back. And the problems? Well, they only occurred between 1965 and 1985. In fact, no one can be sure that there were any real problems during that time, just unsubstantiated reports of problems that were dealt with handily. In fact, in time, the church will be able to say and will say that the so called sexual abuse matter never even happened. It will just be a matter of debate like it has already become right here.

Notice the slyness in JR’s of 1142AM today: he has been victimized by being misunderstood and thus, ensconced in that Wig of Victimization, neatly sidesteps the shortcomings in his material.

Thus we get a distracting excursus on names and persons who may or may not exist (and in the UK of Masterpiece Theater, doncha know?) and may or may not be related to him; then that when he used the word ‘vacation’ he used it – but of course – according to his definition rather than the commonly accepted one but a) who can blame him if some people don’t think like he does and b) who would be so insensitive and hateful to him as to notice?

And then he tosses in something about the Irish pre-Christian era to lard in his standard 3×5 about how the Church and the pagan tribes she baptized were all into “magic”. And even makes a stab at a college-like effort to mimic the lingo: “excuse my redundency [sic]: Christian/myth”. So there’s a college Wig now and various types are trying on the various styles. Charming.

And then he concludes with a sweeping declamation, delivered with the full Wig of Victimhood: if he is now going to be somehow forbidden from just referring to dear relatives and their “Catholic holy sites” – and if (the thinking begins to become incoherent here) such being-forbidden “somehow proves my inability to think clearly” then what can he say? I have – he claims – “called him stupid”.

A couple of points: first, this is a speech that could possibly have been delivered a year or more ago, but – like his general Abusenik material – won’t work in the current era: far too much incoherence and rant (and all the deleted expletives) have gone under the bridge for anyone to consider his difficulties as ‘news’.

Second, notice this Victimist version of Nixon’s ‘Checkers’ speech, or FDR feeling bad not for himself but for “my little dog, Fala”, or Nixon’s harrumphy 1962 declamation (“you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore” – and how many times have we had to sit through one of those 1962 declamations from JR in full Wig?).

Perhaps the esteemed teacher man-boy (shall we just call you Rabbi?) would rather his masses just passively receive his divinely wordly, and otherwordly, beatitudes and parables, while we marvel at his clever handling of those rascally TMR commenter "Scribes and Pharisees" ridiculous and juvenile tests to reveal "the Masters" betrayal of the Emperor. The emperor is the fabulously failed socialist philosophy that is the foundation for their profound hatred for everything good, historically American and certainly, Catholic.

When you can no longer defend, with a straight face (but, we are certainly laughing), your absurd position on just about everything you've contributed, you, predictably, attack.

The worlds of philosophy and law, as recently revealed in the msm is a patently distorted, false and severely egotistical and destructive fairyland. When you don't get the ("legal-philosophical") answer you want, you simply re-distort the "facts", again, and demand (violently) more, from somewhere, someone else. Perhaps we should dispense with the legal system altogether and just use the "thumbs up, thumbs down" Roman colliseum system of justice for the beasts?

Hey, Barry, Eric, "…got a poll for dat…"?

It is comforting to have it confirmed, repeatedly, that I've "reached" my audience so effectively.

Why, as it turns out I have “heard of” Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Would JR care to explain (it isn’t helping his mimicry of university-level educatedness that it has to be asked here) just how this work of Ibsen’s is relevant – in his view, anyway – to the material under discussion here? Or has JR simply passed on to us a hastily-scribbled title from somebody else’s Mental Shoebox and that’s a good enough day’s work for him?

This is why talking into coconuts tied to vines connected to big square empty packing-crates isn’t going to command the great canoes and the silver birds. No matter how many tweaks of mimicry are attempted, or no matter which Wig is plopped on the head.

Well, far be it from me to suggest that doctors, notorious for their "magic thinking", may actually have [far, far greater] moral authority, or dare I say, rationale, over basement "vogueing" attorno-phils, but, the medical community recognizes miracles with every cure that has no known measurable or verifiable scientific justification, as such: CURE: SPONTANEOUS/UNEXPLAINED- in their records, for the record.

You can call "them" whatever makes your dark little hearts leap for joy, but, you can't deny that they happen, and are usually correlated with the practice of prayer and worship.

Just think, one day you, too, could find yourselves "chanting among trees" for one of "those thingies" one day- if not for yourself, for family.

Remember, you are the MINORITY on the old "who's got religion or not" tour, so, don't act as though you have the debate cornered on that topic. You're really not smarter than the billions, through the ages, who believe.

Readers are welcome to consider whether indeed “Wow! [I ] just blew a circuit.” Was there something in the material that demonstrated that, or must we simply take LC’s authoritative declaration for it?

I have been using the “self-licking ice cream cone” image for quite some time in material here. Apparently LC hadn’t noticed it since it is only “now” that he knows about it.

Or, if LC does know what it means and has known all along, then he hasn’t responded by demonstrating how he thinks his material does not qualify as “a self-licking ice cream cone”. If LC didn’t know what it meant, then my assumption (grounded in my familiarity with his material here) turns out to be correct. But with LC and philosophy and thinking … Yes, I do feel that frequent explanation is required, since I can see no evidence of comprehension in his responses. Unless, of course, he is deliberately not-responding. And we certainly can’t rule that out as a possibility.

I presume we shall not be getting an explanation of why he was so attracted to the “self-licking” bit. But this self-claimed elite Philosophy grad and practicing attorney does seem to gravitate toward the pigpen, as we have seen before.

If there is any demonstration of where I am “pseudo-intellectual” and “ad hominem”, LC might want to put it up; otherwise we are back to being distracted by unsupported epithets here – as usual. Although his defense of his selection of the Hume quotation in light of my analysis might be enlightening. But let me be skeptical and imagine we aren’t going to see it.

Since we haven’t established the Harvard creds, then the ketchup-splotch about any “reunions” is what it is. Is he under the impression he would – if he were to attend – not encounter me there? More presumption. And no serious material – although by this far into his comment I imagine we aren’t supposed to notice that.

I “talk about Harvard” simply because none of the material we have seen from LC demonstrates the type of competence and maturity in handling material that people would expect from an elite university. Nor does this present comment of his effect any changes in that regard.

He will be in Cambridge – he assures us – “enjoying some of my dear old friends”; and would these be some of the persons whom he once assured us that if we thought he was unimpressive, we should see some of his friends? Such lucky people they are. I imagine he has cleared his court calendar and postponed all other recreations as well. And will this purported junket be funded in any way along the lines of what I had previously suggested?

We then get a travelogue bit about Lourdes. The purpose of this excursus? It’s not for “vacations”, I presume.

However – lacking any other attractions – Lourdes may well be a destination for those (as I said before) who wish to place themselves near something that seems to speak to the human need for Meaning. But – as usual – rather than address the challenging material I have put up about Lourdes, LC will simply throw some coconuts at it all. Ketchup-splattered, of course. Memo: we aren’t supposed to notice.

But apparently an awful lot of people do sense some sort of Meaning there – or else b) they go in their millions to an otherwise attraction-less locale simply to buy tee-shirts and ballcaps (to wear sideways, perhaps). But it has to be that (b) for LC; otherwise he has some ‘splainin to do – and he don’t do no stinkin’ splainin’ . Ovvvvv courssssssse. And he went to Harvard too. We needn’t take JR’s word for it, we have LC’s word for it. Whatever value that alleged education has for conducting deliberations on this site is anybody’s guess. But it’s a ‘credential’, allegedly. In the good old days (which still exist on various sites in the Webverse) you could tell a story and nobody would have the bad taste to question it.

Let the record show that it is LC who owns the acute description “a sinister movement of colluding deviants, calculating lawyers, and biased media bent on getting money for nothing”. I was particularly impressed by the acuity and vividness of “calculating deviants” – and am actually a bit surprised: this level of material from a commenter whose material doesn’t usually rise to such a level is indeed startling. But one must take truth where one finds it when dealing with the cafeteria. Ex ore infantium, as they say.

D’Antonio’s book certainly went quite a way toward establishing the “calculating lawyers” bit; and the media angle has been discussed here often enough.

LC then rolls on, apparently working the angle that Nothing Has Changed. If he could offer some material in support of that assertion, especially in light of the extant research material and numbers that we do have, then let him put that material up here. But let me be skeptical and say that we won’t see any of that.

Instead, we will get more of the level of material we have gotten in this comment of LC’s.

Readers may consider for themselves: would a person as largely educated and professionally-called and accredited as LC claims to be ever waste his time with such a tawdry collection of contentless-snark, especially when there is serious material that might be engaged? But that’s precisely the problem here: it was either snark or else try to explain the incoherences and weaknesses of his position (the Hume quotation, again, would be a handy starting-place).

The alternative explanation, of course, is that we simply aren’t dealing with such a person here in the first place. If one wants to deploy Ockham’s Razor, that would be the explanation of choice.

Actually, I am not looking to “debate” all the claims; I am and have-been looking to find out about them. As I told commenter Ecker not long ago here. But this is precisely where LC and all of that ilk suddenly don’t want to see much analysis at all. Instead, they’d like it if we could all just sit around the internet campfire and tell ‘stories’ and go gaga … then this would be the cookout that LC and the Gang want to keep going for as long as they possibly can. And don’t worry about running out of burgers – if the burgers are imaginary, then with the right type of party-goers, you can never run out.

It’s sort of like a miracle, isn’t it? Just with story-burgers rather than loaves and fishes. That’s where LC wants us all to be. And is not at all amused that the invitation is not accepted.

Lastly, although apparently one cannot rule out that LC has taken to addressing some phantasmagoric interlocutor while tapping out his comment (it does seem to happen a lot to certain types here), I would point out for the record that the first challenge in the Catholic Abuse Matter is to ascertain What Happened and How Much Of It. That being said, it is the Abuseniks who are distracting and derailing the process here, because they really don’t want those questions seriously looked-at. It’s their story-way or the highway.

“In fact, in time, the church will be able to say and will say that the so-called sexual abuse matter never happened”. Well, in regard to the stories, we haven’t had much evidence here that has held up to even modest analysis.

And I for one would say that the Catholic Abuse Matter certainly has indeed happened; but the next question is: How did it happen? How did so much based on so demonstrably little manage to keep itself rolling for so long?

Part of the answer is that the internet enabled an awful lot of story-telling, and the media for the most part and for its own reasons simply accepted those stories without question (to ask a question is, as we all know, merely to re-victimize; just as – in certain philosophical circles – to ask a question is to victimize the preferences of the preferrer).

Stories and more stories: abuse, elite education, professional and mature legal career … stories and stories. But when we try to look closer … what do we get? We get what we have gotten from LC here.

Wrong again princess. It was about compensating the already harmed and protection of the unharmed. Nobody but Catholics care about Catholicism and nobody's stopping you from caring about it now. Quit lying.

Oh Jimmy, please remember your oft-claimed position that you're NOT AGAINST religion, you are only AGAINST those rascally Catholic bishops (you know, the "Corporate Church"?) that insisted on covering up the "dastardly deeds of dem deviants".

No one forces any religion on you in the [good old] USA, you do have a choice to be as much of an atheist as you can rationalize (not laughing, really), so, redemption is not something you need worry about if you aren't a "player", anyway, right?

"The belief that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."

Only half of what I post has been printed here. My response to your line about being against religion was not posted. no obscenities just too much accuracy, for Dave I guess. I'm not complaining. I'm just telling you. You don't get everything I write. So don't think I haven't responded to your nonsense when i have.

AE Housman has this kid standing in the town square. He says, ‘Good people do you love your lives, and have you ears for sense? Here is a knife like other knives that cost me eighteen pence. I need but plunge it in my heart and down will come the sky and Earth’s foundations will depart and all you folk will die.’ Right? When you die, you loose everything. The world ends with your death. That is it. The monoplane is the only plane. Adieu.

Apparently JR doesn’t really have anything to contribute in regard to Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Apparently he simply mentioned it, and can’t be held responsible if anybody hastily and dumbly jumped to the conclusion that he meant anything relevant by it. But – we are assured – he had twelve “solid” years of high school. One wonders why Ibsen has stayed in his mind – so to speak – after all these decades, yet he can’t think why Ibsen and this work of his has done so.

Wow math isn't your game nor is reading. A, I didn't read Ibsen in high school but in junior college still more than 4 decades ago.. B, I gave my analysis connecting the spa town and it's bourgousie in "Master Builder" to Lourdes. C, If I had had "12 solid years of high school" I'd be in the Guinness Book of Records for being the most stupid student ever.

Back to Ibsen, a friend of mine picked up at a garage sale. A first edition (in English) of Ibsens plays when he got home he found that the book was previously owned by John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, the film Reds is based on his life. It had Reed's name and address in the Village written in his own hand. Lucky find. Just FYI.

I don't know, Jimmy, the only place you can find evil, with hard evidence – not just baseless claims based in bigotry (such as are most in the Church abuse matter), is where God has been rejected.

And, as I've been implying for some time, there seems to be a strong link between the agenda of the anarchists-atheist-satanists, socialists-communists, gays, feminists, pedophiles, polygamists and all the rest of the Godless misfits and malcontents our overindulging culture spawned since the 60s.

You should have just left it at "you (sic) don't know". Because you most certainly don't know much at all. Lumping in anarchy and socialism with devil worship. Lumping "gays and feminists" with pedophiles! [edited by moderator]

The quotation from Housman is to Number XXVI of his “More Poems” collection, originally published in 1936.

The actual poem begins “Good creatures, …” rather than “Good people”. The difference between LC’s quotation and the original text may be because of a) his unknowing use of an altered text or b) the deliberate (on his part and/or the part of the alterer) changing of the text from “creatures” to “people” in order to avoid the hefty implications of humans-having-been-created that exists in the original. In the altered form LC uses here, the rather significant complicating differences between Housman and the LC/Monoplanar position are neatly (if only for the moment) eliminated.

The text as LC quotes it actually constitutes the entirety of Number XXVI.

The standard Literature 101 questions would be: Is Housman speaking through this character and thereby revealing his own position? Or is Housman using this character’s speech (i.e. the text of the poem here) to highlight a specific movement of the human mind and soul, but not necessarily one that Housman himself supports?

In so short a text, it is hard to know simply from the material Housman provides in the poem. However, that “Creatures” constitutes a hefty nugget to factor into the assessment (except that LC and whoever changed the text slyly got rid of that “Creatures”).

In his other works, especially clear in A Shropshire Lad, Housman puts various positions in the mouths of various speakers; indeed he has ghosts or revenants come back to share their observations. So there remains here a substantial question of the difference between what Housman wrote in his text (expressed through a particular character) and what Housman himself believed (such that somebody might later try to support his own position by quoting Housman along the lines of ‘A.E. Housman said …’ and so on).

Specifically: does Housman mean to tell us that he basically holds for a Monplanar view of existence? Or does Housman here simply put into poetic form a particular, perhaps even widespread, view about life that he has observed in others (but does not necessarily hold himself)? Again, that “Creatures” assumes a significant role here, although – I think equally significantly – that is precisely the bit that has been altered in LC’s comment.

I say “equally significantly” because I think the larger value here is to realize that with LC’s comment we are seeing clearly what would be called the Proof-Text phenomenon: persons use quotations not to expand or open discourse and deliberation, but rather merely to ‘prove’ the conclusion that they have already reached. This is usually associated with Fundamentalists (of the American Protestant variety) but the fundamentalistic mind-set need not be limited to any particular ideology or dogmatic corpus; here we see this mind-set being deployed in order to deploy a Proof-Text of LC’s personally-preferred Monoplanar position. The Proof-Text constitutes a form of the ‘argument from authority’, i.e.: See – even so important and well-known a writer as Housman agrees with me!

Or is Housman noting with rueful respect the all-too-human tendency (especially in a certain species of self-absorbed, self-important and sentimental young adults) towards solipsism: defining all reality merely by how it relates to yourself and even presuming that without your own self somehow observing and/or participating in reality, then reality would cease to exist? This almost pitch-perfect childishness is precisely the point to which LC leads us in his comment: when you die, reality ceases.

All reality on the Monoplane ceases? And even Reality on the Metaplane? Really?

But – in an equally vivid demonstration of the less savory characteristics of the Proof-Text mentality – it doesn’t really look like Housman agrees with LC at all; especially in light of LC’s altering or his use, of an altered version of his purported Proof-Text.

This also connects to JR’s recent bit about not being “the most stupid student ever” and his even more interesting revelations that he went to “junior college” and then discovered that simply by reading on his own “one can educate oneself”. Marvelous. And the results of that rather self-servingly convenient discovery are in the record here and elsewhere for all to see. I am reminded so very clearly of Captain Reynaud’s comment to Rick when introducing him to Major Strasser: “Rick, the Major is one of the reasons the Third Reich enjoys the reputation it does in the world today”. Just so.

And – as always when feeling caught-out – JR has a ‘story’: in this case that he not only a) just happens to have a friend who stumbled across a copy of Ibsen’s work but that b) it was a first-edition and that c) it had previously been owned by John Reed and that d) it has Reed’s address in his own hand written into it. In other words – in best magician’s manipulation – keep your eye on the distracting bevy of birdies suddenly sent up into the air, and stop thinking about the nonsensical aspects of JR’s (‘educated’, but of course) application of Ibsen to Lourdes.

In which regard – since both JR and LC have brought up some aspect of it: why would all these people come to Lourdes if there were nothing of interest to them? The fact that all those hotels are there (LC) simply raises more questions than it answers. And if Lourdes is a “fraud” (JR) then who is perpetrating it and how have they pulled it off for so very long?

There is something about all those millions of people that provides an answer to these otherwise rather inexplicable statistics: human beings have a need-for and a sense-of Meaning (not just ‘meaning’ with a small-‘m’) and somehow Lourdes has been relevant in addressing that need, for millions over 150 or more years. More consideration of that need-for and sense-of Meaning is indicated, I would say. And the role of Lourdes and similar places in meeting that need.

If, on the other hand, one wishes to argue that people are stupid like cattle and can be hoodwinked – in other words that you can fool most of the people most of the time – then we see quickly into just what slag-heaps the Monoplane leads us: not only do most human-beings lack the ability to make substantive and accurate judgments about the nature of themselves and their existence, but also that there exist such elite un-maskers as we have seen in some Wigs here who actually see clearly that this is so; life is what it is and then you die.

I would, lastly, note that in neither LC’s deployment of Housman (similar to his recent deployment of Hume) nor in JR’s assertion that you don’t have to have an education to be educated (highlighting with pitch-perfect precision my cargo-cult analogy: you don’t need to know about the theory and dynamics of radio to talk into a half-coconut that is tied to a vine that is tied to an empty ammo-crate) do we see the workings of an educated mind, capable of not simply reading, but of assessing, placing in context, considering alternatives, and so on. All we see here is Proof-Texting: which is something – as I’m sure JR and LC and similar others would agree – that any stereotypical backwoods, half-crazed fundamentalist bible-thumper can do without the confusions, complications and delays of having gotten any education whatsoever.

But, little Jimmy, you keep telling us that you don't hate Catholics or the religion, yet, you can't resist regularly engaging in juvenile (a chronic emotional state in which you seem to thrive- good memories, perhaps?) criticisms of her dogma and doctrine. As a matter of fact, I would bet that you've contributed more antiCatholic (hateful, bigoted, distortions) comments than anyone else.

Pretty soon we will be treated to being called a bunch of stupid, poopy-heads, with an "I hate you" scream followed by a slammed door-

You slammed your own door on me and every other victim of your church's abuse, You've repeatedly slammed it on every attempt made at dialog.

i have written many times most failed to be posted giving you D and you P credit for my dropping all civility here. I now give you none because you both have never given any.

The readers here (though they may be shocked a little at what I write) know full well that what I've said about your lack of civility is the truth. They can read.

Now to Professor Moriarity,P,

First: You get every fact wrong. I'm obviously considered less than by you. Who are you to "play" the superior person? Why do I tell my little stories? So that you may know me as a human being. To me it's important that my "opposition" know; I am like them, just a person. But you attack those attempts on my part, . Leaving equinimity where?

Secondly it seems pretty obvious to me (and to everyone else here) that you have been making ad hominem attacks as away of degrading and de-humanizing "the enemy". You've treated me and everyother victim who's posted here with immediate scorn basicly for our not being you ; or our not having your "education" and or belief system and or analysis of the way things are vis a vis this "scandal'.

There's never been the offer from you to agree to disagree. Snobbery and eliteism seem to be your defense against all opposition and the world itself.Just my opinion

No one cares what you "think' because, if it doesn't toe your line you mock what they think. So attack away , pretend the adhominems don't exist and that you are merely being "reasonable".

Nobody's fooled by your foolishness or your attempts to degrade.You're so obvious.

The Wig of Victimization is firmly clamped upon the head and thus the high-ground is implicitly claimed. This pre-positioning neatly serves to ward off any skeptical analysis – at least in the Playbook, which is now getting on in years.

In best Playbook form, JR demonstrates here that no “dialog” is possible unless we buy the victimization claims to begin with – thus we are talked into giving away the farm before we even get to the “dialog” stage. This is akin to Hitler’s sly gambit: as a precondition for conducting ‘discussion’, the Czech government was invited to agree that the Sudeten Germans had a legitimate cause for wanting to belong to the Reich. But once that highly dubious and contestable issue was given-away, then there would have been no gravamen for “dialog” left – except for whether Hitler wanted coffee or tea with his victory lunch.

I can make no sense of JR’s next paragraph. It seems to say that most of his postings have “failed to be posted” (once the expletives were deleted how much was left of them?) and thus – somehow – that this means he is now presuming that he is justified in “dropping all civility here”. Do his numerously-deleted expletives qualify as “civility” according to his vast (self-)education? What less can we expect in the way of “civility” now?

Readers are now informed that JR just knows that they know that what he has “said about your lack of civility is the truth … They can read”. Does JR’s (self-)education not prepare him for the possibility that the readers, being able to read, would be able to read all of his own incivilities (those, that is, that have not risen to the delete-able level of overt expletive)?

Anyhoo, he then turns his attention to my material. His material here consists of assertions that are not supported by any demonstration whatsoever. Thus I “get every fact wrong” – but no examples of such ‘wrong facts’ are given.

Then an incoherent statement: “I am obviously considered less than by you”. The (self-)education could use some perusal of a grammar book (perhaps obtainable at the library of the University of Garage Sale).

Then he claims that he “tells [his] little stories” so that “you may know me as a human being”. This is a sly ploy indeed. It would instantly place me in the ‘insensitive’ position of not wanting to “know” him “as a human being” – except that his “little stories” never reveal much about himself in the first place, but rather serve merely to imply that he must be believed because he is so very importantly involved in great and relevant matters.

Thus he just happens to have a relative who was simultaneously an assistant to the Director of the FBI and an LAPD police lieutenant; he just happened to have been at an Irish hospital that was under discussion; he just happens to have relatives who “vacation” at Lourdes; he just happens to know somebody who came across a first-edition of Ibsen that was owned and written-in by John Reed.

The readers’ attention is invited to the fact that even if these “little stories” were true, they would reveal next to nothing about JR “as a person” in the first place. But they would serve as sly – sleazy, perhaps – levers to try and crowbar the readers’ sympathies toward him (and thus toward whatever issue he was seeking to influence their sympathies).

In so very much of his commenting style and strategy, he is – I will say – not like most of the readership at all. And I submit that the record of comments on this site clearly demonstrates that. (Objections to my thought here will be happily answered; some supportive quotations for any objections required.)

Thus then what I “attack” is not poor JR “as a person” but rather the material (expletives deleted) and “little stories” he puts up and the strategies beneath them and implications that flow from them. This is a part of university-level discourse that apparently JR doesn’t know about; secure and satisfied in his presumption that anybody can fill up mental shoeboxes full of 3×5 cards and that’s all an “education” is, really. Which presumption is right up there on a par with the presumption that all you need to command the silver birds and the great canoes is something that looks like a microphone and something that looks like a wire and something that looks like a transmitter and some noises that sound like intelligible discourse.

But the Playbook scam is to quickly seduce people into accepting the Wig of Victimization and then – having given away their chance to look carefully at allegations – you can quickly make them feel guilty for ever having doubted you “as a person” to begin-with. So very very very neat.

Thus too then, the point about “equinimity” is revealed for the sly gambit it really is: because the only way to purchase it from those wearing the Wig of Victimization is to give away all your rights to examine their claims. And once you have done that, you have given them the Game and you are no longer in a condition of “equinimity” in regard to them at all. As with Hitler, the only way to treat him as an equal is to give him complete power over you and the Game – which is as dubious and bad a deal as can ever be set-up.

We are then informed that it is “pretty obvious” to JR “and to everyone else here” that you have been making ad-hominem attacks (you mean, like calling you “Fool!” or … something like that?). I have not “treated” JR “and every other victim who’s posted here” because I am still trying to figure out how to determine who is and isn’t a victim – which is a position that has clearly brought out the nasty and the sleazy in many of the erstwhile victim-commenters. Vampires always smile, until you smile back and politely reach for the holy-water … and then the fangs come out.

Why should JR complain about what I might or might not think about his “education”, since he seems very satisfied with his own? Rather: JR is upset that his own ‘education’ doesn’t seem to stand up to much analysis at all, and his preferred solution to that is to get other people to stop trying to deploy their own education in the matters dealt with on this site. Since he appears to have brought a Pop Warner football to a varsity baseball game, he now wants everybody to accept that a Pop Warner football is an acceptable baseball and that anybody who thinks otherwise is merely hateful and ‘showing off’ and making-fun of him or otherwise not treating him “as a person”.

And he whines that “there has never been the offer from you to agree to disagree”. Whyshould there be? He and his ilk have made stupendous claims and allegations, that have been thrown into the public forum along with the demand for public (and even legal and legislative) action, and when it turns out that no analysis has yet supported whatever claims and material we have managed to acquire on this site, yet he now claims that we should all just “agree to disagree” as to whether or not the claims and allegations are or ever were genuine in the first place.

Thus the sleazy donning of the Wig of Sweet Fraternal Reason, and coyly implying that the only real problem here is a refusal to just shut up and let The Ball Keep Rolling, whether or not we ‘agree’ that the Ball should be Rolling in the first place. Ja! And why were those Czechs so lumpishly and oppressively stubborn by refusing the poor little Sudeten Germans the chance to ‘go home’ (by bringing their German ‘home’ deeply into the Czech territory) … ?

Snobbery? In the face of the level of material that sometimes has to be dealt with here, the bar for what might constitute “snobbery” is set mighty low indeed. And – but of course – to the cargo-cult native you don’t have to know very much more about radio dynamics to be considered “elitist”, especially if you point out the coconuts and the vines and the empty boxes intended to pass-for radio equipment.

So I will say back at JR that he is “so obvious”: he gives away, time after time, the classic Playbook gambits that have helped this Stampede get started and keep-rolling for so long on so little demonstrable basis. And – as I have said several times before – it is precisely because he doesn’t realize just how weak the core Victimist Internet Stampede position is that he constitutes such a danger to it: he gives the Playbook gambits away precisely because he cannot imagine that it could be exposed. Since his own ‘education’ easily makes room for the Playbook, and since he presumes he has just as good an education as anybody who actually went to college or anybody who can simply think-things through, then he simplistically thinks that the Playbook can pass muster anywhere and everywhere and all the time … and gives the Game away time after time.

"Lumping in anarchy and socialism with devil worship. Lumping "gays and feminists" with pedophiles! [edited by moderator]"

They so hate it when we use their own dishonest tactics against them.

We've learned well from the masters of deceit, distortion and deception; don't you like the sight, touch, taste, sound or smell of our broad-brush smear-tactics?

How about personal attacks, including on family members, the lefts favorite tactic?

Don't our loosey-goosey pseudo-links, lack of evidence and conspiracy theories deserve the same respect and consideration as yours? At least your peers won't lose their vocations (a bit more than a lousy job), friends, family, public trust and freedom.

Our innocent priests and all faithful Catholics know all too well the sight, touch, sound, smell and taste of your tactics.

Now, you're going to learn to experience the very same distortion of the "senses".

From my perspective, TMR reveals and analyzes the fact that the mainstream media practices a particularly hateful bias against Catholics, when it comes to the minor abuse matter, largely, and also when it comes to anything else where Catholic religo-philosophy may inform social, moral and political issues.

The media bias is a fact for which there is no "other" dialogue – facts can not be dialogued or debated – they are facts fit only for reporting. The leftist mentality, and practice, is to not accept fact, it is to revise facts to fit their socio-political agenda, which requires the destruction of the truth. That is also a fact as clearly expressed throughout the history of progressive-leftist philosophy. No leftist regime, organization, or person has ever operated within the concept of fact, or truth. They must lie (if not overpower) to gain control of the population, otherwise, they could not succeed in implementing their oppressive regimes, however briefly.

It is also a fact that the media agenda is driven by it's leftist philosophy, as expressed (documented) in it's coverage and treatment of political, social, legal, entertainment, and all religious matters. That is as much a fact as that the unions, entertainment industry and our public educational system are similarly biased in favor of leftist philosophy.

So, the political-social philosophy and morals of the self-identifying victims (where there are no witnesses, evidence or reliable memories), media, law enforcement, elected officials, and the legal system investigating, reporting, and prosecuting the Catholic clergy and laymen cases is of paramount consideration when determining the validity and integrity of those cases.

The only debating-dialoguing point for conduct at TMR is precisely just how much the insidiousness of the leftist bias and corruption has contributed to the prosecution of innocent priests, and to reveal the extent of lefts ultimate goal of persecuting the Church.

So far, the "victim advocates" at TMR who are "dialoguing" about the legal and media protocols and processes for investigating reporting and prosecuting Catholic clergy has focused almost exclusively on their inevitable deterioration into full-blown Catholic-bashing, and not on any of the particulars, however precedential, corrupt and biased, of the flimsy cases being made against clergy.

Not one faithful Catholic TMR commenter has defended guilty clergy or said that truly violated victims should not be compensated, not ever.

By the same token, no one, including victim-advocates, should want to see innocent men or institutions, prosecuted or defamed, and no one who is honest should want any [more] financial awards (settlements) going to corrupt attorneys and fraudulent victims when those monies should go where they were always designed to go; to charitable causes (eg. hospitals and hospices, schools, the poor, the persecuted and oppressed worldwide) and to support the universal system that manages and disperses those funds. Only the politically-philosophically biased (antiCatholic) would disagree. And, we hav seen that disagreement stated here on TMR, repeatedly, as punishment for the historic and current "ills and crimes committed by, and moral teachings of the Church". These victim-advocates care far less about victims and much more about Catholic religious dogma and doctrine as relates to their politics and morality.

And, therein lies the problem of the so-called dialogue; One side comes at this issue with clean hands, the other does not.

It is an absolute certainty that there will not be one responsive or responsible comment addressing any of these points from those victim-advocates that claim to want to dialogue; all we'll see from them is denials, distortions [of our words and concepts] and more antiCatholic bigotry (….and the usual personal attacks).

Since there is a larger issue involved, I respond here to JR’s of 231PM on the 20th: I am not “inventing” JR’s “arguments”. Rather, I simply look at them for the conceptual material and the dynamics that are already there in them. That JR hasn’t really thought-through the material that he puts up – and is thus so often surprised by what flows from his material – is a reality to which he may want to give some sustained thought.

We have seen this with LC as well, especially in this matter of Proof-Text thinking: persons will grasp for a particular quotation simply because it seems to them to support their preferred and already-reached conclusion; then – when the text is examined a bit and it turns out not to perform as they had hoped – they are invariably confounded and upset and – not to put too fine a point on it – surprised.

Proof-Texting – hardly limited to these two commenters – too often passes for ‘thinking’ and for ‘education’, in my opinion. I have formed the distinct impression that such a Proof-Texting approach was what LC took away from his (purported) elite university experience: adopt whatever position you ‘prefer’, rustle up some quotations from this or that author (perhaps that author him/herself a Proof-Texty type) and call it a good day’s work. The presumption is that if you can string enough of them together with a modicum of grammatical coherence then you are educated and have established the chops of your position and your own chops as a position-holder and thus you are ‘educated’.

JR’s position is somewhat different: you can educate yourself by “reading” and – implicitly – why then the need for a university education? He establishes this with a tendentiously selective parsing of the British academic usage of the term “reading” (e.g. X is reading History at Oxford). But of course, in the British practice, the student not only “reads” material, but then attends tutorials where s/he has to explain the significance of what s/he has ‘read’ and express coherently the historically-reasoned conclusions s/he has developed from that “reading”; and has to write all that up coherently as well. The Brit vision does not turn the university into merely one longish library “reading” experience.

If one were to accept JR’s imagined vision of what a university “reading” experience is, then one wouldn’t really need to attend university to achieve it; one could simply – with as much skill and application as one could muster – troll libraries, bookstores, various groups, and the Web (through search-engine techniques) for congenial material.

So, neither JR or LC have actually demonstrated university-type skills in their material here. LC’s presentation of various booky-bits through quotations can easily be construed as simply the fruit of a somewhat less-challenged competence than JR’s in the matter of such selective trolling for congenial quotes. The idea of actually having to ‘explain’ or ‘defend’ your theses and ideas about the quoted material seems alien to both of them.

And that reality is handled merely by the Victimist mantra that if you doubt or disagree-with my ‘story’ or my material then you are merely attacking me and re-victimizing me. Perhaps refined to then lead to this conclusion: since you are attacking me then I don’t have to respond to what you are saying.

The Stampede – so strongly enabled by the development of the Web – was lubricated precisely by the media – for their own purposes – accepting all of these ground-rules and presumptions, and simply amplifying whatever was claimed by either the story-tellers or their savvy counsel (who, in Jeff Anderson’s overall strategy, were urged to establish quiet but mutually-rewarding quid-pro-quo relationships with the media). Michael D’Antonio’s book – seeking to parade all the strategy in the service of the Abusenik Stampede – actually winds up revealing in disturbing detail just how well this strategy of Anderson’s was implemented, as was so very thoroughly described in the particular instance of the Boston Globe’s chicanery starting in the summer of 2001 when its new editor wanted to make a big splash for himself.

Oh yea and the Catholics didn't want the bible in native lanquages either The world knows you don't want information getting out. Or people thinking for themselves. After all we have 2000 years of experience with the Catholic church. We remember what it was like when religion reigned supreme. Your religion, in particular, ruled for the longest time period. I guess like some Tennessee Williams character you never got over the loss of power.

What kind of career did you have Captain Andy? Who would put up with a boss like you? Were there any suicides?

The media isn't here asking you questions; or giving you information; Dave Pierre is giving his opinion on what he says the media says regarding this subject. How would you report it differently than the N.Y.Times. for example? Or would you have reported any of the scandal (the cover-up) at all?

It is far better to attack the others faith, beliefs and personally villify them (so far as what you think you know) than to attempt to defend your astoundingly indefensable philosophical-political and undeniably bigoted nonsense. Repeat: Your leftist-anarchist philosophy is indefensible [Stupid] in the broader sense (for those self-proclaimed "elite academicians" who feign perennial confusion [a sick and failed ploy to degrade...busted]) and about other contributors comments, and simply disgusting when applied to the Church abuse matter.

Your intentions are not to help abuse victims anywhere, your intentions are only to bash the Catholic religion and the Church. You are dirty from head to toe.

Where is the analyses or commentary, by those opposed to TMRs positional articles- analyses (subject article?), of the media, activist groups and prosecutors actions as pertains to the Church abuse matter? Not a sensible word from most of those TMR "contributors". Apparently, all they're capable of doing is attacking the TMR sites' Church-supporting commenters, nary a word about the article itself. Typical lefty tactics when their politics fails.

Robertson "contributed" approximately 58 (and counting…) comments under the heading of this subject TMR article; not ONE of them addressed any of the details of that article – but, every one of them attacked commenters who supported the Church, TMRs analysis, or other commenters that endorsed TMR-supporting commenters (which, incidentally, is the point of the "dialogUE" game, you are supposed to either agree or disagree with the article and engage, similarly, with other commenters on the article). Problem here is that "I just can't live with the fact that as a young man I permitted myself to be that 'deer in the headlights' [what was it, four times?- even a stupid deer figures out how to avoid a car after a couple times-tops], and then of course I was so traumatized by the 'experience', that I decided being 'gay' was "good", but being Catholic was "bad". What a pure, heaping load of crap we're supposed to accept from these ridiculous imposters. Yeah, not.

Learned[disabled]Counsel contributed 7 incomprehensible comments, the majority of which attacked (astoundingly feeble and failed attempts) Publion's analysis and comments on 'everything', with a few intentionally condescending "lessons" for me. My comments do seem to have a "special" effect on this prof-phony who tries so hard to impress with his [let's be generous here...] "musings" that it's painful to witness. His contributions invariably result in disconnected words and thoughts, meandering all over the blog-road, forever lost (GPS for lost, wandering words looking to form concepts out there, anywhere, yet?) for the lack of clarity and focus, save for Publions efforts to "interpret". He should thank -on his knees- Publion for his/her patient efforts in unwinding and unraveling LdCs babblings, to which he/she can then actually and honestly respond. The rest of us "unwashed masses", quite frankly, are not interested enough to make any attempt at decoding the LdC gobbledygook. Only a radical self-engrandising elitist-leftist could possibly be as insufferably obnoxious as LdC – this is that guy that took his beatings, in the schoolyard and on the bus, on a regular basis – no doubt (perhaps, it was the neighborhood Catholic kids that had to dispense those lessons – "…oh, they'll pay someday…"- heh, Fauntleroy?).

Might be best to let the two or three silly dogs here chase their own and each others' tails (really, not going there), from now on.

Meanwhile, some of us will ignore the lefts bigoted profiling of healthy/truthful-minded faithful Americans and Catholics (the real 99%) and continue to identify where in our society, no matter how many "protected classes" are faux-offended by our truthfulness, the fault of our society's ills for the past 50 year lie, for the good of our country and to maintain our God-given (not motherearth-giving, you "LOONS") freedoms.

I was the good kid in school very quiet, Very Catholic. Very devout. I took religion very seriously.

When my perp knew I had an hour between class and a play rehersal. He ordered me to his office, under the qise of tutoring, I was failing his class: chemistry. (I hated math and science, generally)

In my Catholic school education we were taught first and formost : Obey and show respect. If you didn't you were out. (First beaten then out actually).

I wanted no one ever to know what was happening to me ; but to disobey?. I couldn't. I didn't know how.

I had just turned 16, very devout; and after 11 years of Catholic schools, was that frightened, obedient deer in the headlights.( For a while.) I didn't know what I could do. I didn't believe anyone would believe me. Finally I broke and told a friend; and when I say broke, I mean broke…. enough of this

It must be hard for an older Catholic to hear all of this. You've believed for so long and I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings. I'll probably say more that will do it again. I don't want to hurt people. I hate hurting people.

But if it's a fight between truth and lies. For me truth telling wins. What I write is what I see to be true. You don't? Fine. You are free.